Citrus-flavored beverages have earned great popularity in the marketplace. One particularly popular type of citrus flavored beverage is the type dispensed by food serve operators from dispensing equipment at restaurants and other food service locations.
In a common dispensing arrangement, two liquid streams are combined by the dispensing equipment to produce a beverage that is ready-to-drink, the first liquid stream typically being water and the second liquid stream typically being a concentrated aqueous beverage mixture. The marketing of aqueous beverage mixtures, referred to as post-mix syrup in the trade, allows beverage producers to reduce the beverage volume which must be packaged and shipped, thereby resulting in a cost savings.
In the production of citrus-flavored beverage concentrates, a problem with citrus flavor stability has been identified. It has been discovered that, during typical citrus-flavored beverage concentrate storage, the citrus flavor itself is unstable and, in many instances, changes in character prior to final preparation in a food service dispenser or at the post as it is referred to in the trade. The poor citrus flavor stability has been found by the inventors to be particularly pronounced in citrus-flavored beverage concentrates containing lemon oil, with a noticable absence of lemon flavor existing at the time when the lemon flavored concentrate is generally used to produce a ready-to-drink beverage.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,529,606 to Fustier et al. teaches that a citrus-flavored ready-to-drink beverage contained in a polyethylene container exhibits reduced flavor loss, minimized off-flavor development, and extended shelf-life by the addition of small amounts of coconut oil or dearomatized cocoa butter to the beverage.
Atkins et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 3,782,972 teach preparation of an enhanced citrus essence by increasing the alcoholic content of the aqueous phase of the essence so that its capacity for desirable aldehyde type components is increased.
Murdock and Hunter in Journal of Food Science, Volume 35 (1970), pp. 652-655, disclose that tangerine, lemon and grapefruit oil emulsions have been shown to undergo undesirable modification as a result of microbial growth.